


do you feel okay? (i want you back)

by AllTheSaltInTheSea



Category: Faking It (TV 2014)
Genre: AU, F/F, Fix-it fic, Karmy - Freeform, Multi, bisexual karma, karma-centric, other background pairings, s3 rewrite, shanoah, slow burn karmy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-23
Updated: 2016-06-25
Packaged: 2018-06-10 07:55:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6946480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllTheSaltInTheSea/pseuds/AllTheSaltInTheSea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fix-it fic, rewriting s3 of Faking It. </p>
<p>A summer apart from Amy forces Karma to re-evaluate her relationship with her best friend, while some unexpected new friendships push her to question everything she thought she knew about herself. </p>
<p>Slow-burn Karmy, Karma-centric.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. i got that summertime, summertime sadness

**Author's Note:**

> I initially posted this over on Tumblr, but it's found its way over here at last. Basically it's my take on s3. 
> 
> What you can expect from this fic:
> 
> \- Endgame Karmy. But it'll be a slow burn. 
> 
> \- Bisexual Karma. Karma isn't just going to wake up one day and decide she's into Amy, without any exploration of what that means for her or why it took her so long to figure that out. So buckle up kids! This fic is Karma's long bisexual night of the soul, and I hope it does justice to all the fans who headcanoned bi Karma and hoped to see themselves reflected in her onscreen. We'll never get that now, but maybe this fic will fill the void for some of you. 
> 
> \- Karma growing and maturing as a person. Her character development is hugely important to me, and this fic is going to be very Karma-focused. 
> 
> \- Karma learning who she is without Amy (and using that distance to put together the truth about her feelings). I've always thought that part of the reason Karma doesn't understand her romantic feelings for Amy is that she's never really had another close friend. Amy is her only frame of reference for friendship, so she thinks the way she feels about Amy is how all best friends feel. As she begins to forge closer friendships with other people, she'll start to realize that some things (her possessiveness, her jealousy, her incredibly gay plans for their future together) are more "girlfriend" than "best friend". 
> 
> \- Background ships and other characters. Karma is going to be the POV character here, but I'm really attached to the rest of the cast too, so hopefully you'll see their stories unfold as well. You'll see some Shanoah, some Lauren / Amy sistership that doesn't disappear after two episodes, some Sabramy (in which Sabrina is not The Actual Worst), and some Felix / Karma friendship. Felix and Karma are not gonna be romantic. Ever. 
> 
> \- Also never becoming romantic: Lauren and Liam. Lauren is a queen, and while I don't intend for my Liam to be a COMPLETE irredeemable doucheface, he's still Liam Booker and is not snagging Queen Lauren in this or any universe. 
> 
> \- Kiam is dead. I kill it as gracefully as possible in this chapter. Karma still thinks mostly kindly of Liam, and they'll still maintain a friendship, but they're not going to be romantic again. The main barrier to Karmy in this fic isn't Liam - it's Karma's confusion about her feelings, and Amy's oblivious attempts to move on. Liam is a spanner in nobody's life but his own. 
> 
> \- There will probably be a bit more realism in this fic than there is in the show. The show is fun and all, but I don't see the point in writing teenage characters if you're going to have them live like twenty somethings. So Lauren and Liam aren't going to be living alone in a condo sophomore year. (And if they were, Liam wouldn't be acting like a teenage Hugh Hefner in it.) 
> 
> If you like the fic, please comment or leave me kudos! I haven't written anything in long time, and I'm not ashamed to ask for encouragement. :)

It's Liam she sees first, after the summer from hell.

He took off two days after Amy did, on some quest to find his bio-dad with Zita. The first Karma knew about it was when he instagrammed a picture of Zita in a cucumber eye mask on her private jet. He captioned it with a Shrek emoji one of the Skwerkel interns made specially for him, and tagged it with #now flying over france #man on a mission #cest la vie zee. And that was it.

But he's back now, looking tall and tan, with his shirt sleeves rolled up and a smile on his face. His hair is cut shorter at the sides and something about him looks different somehow. Lighter. Easier. Less _Liam Booker_. He's not wearing what Karma always used to think of as his brooding expression, and Amy used to call his “constipated face”.

 _Don't think of Amy_ , she reminds herself. It's easier when she doesn't think of Amy. But she looks at Liam and she can't _not_ think of Amy. It's not just their shared history. It's that the last time she saw Liam he accused her of only wanting to save Hester so she could be with Amy. The last time she saw Liam Booker, he was telling her she'd kissed Amy at a party. He'd looked so frustrated then, like he wanted to yell at her, _“Get it together, Karma!”_

He doesn't look like he wants to yell at her now.

“Karma,” he says warmly. “Hey.”

Karma straightens up. She's at work, and she was fishing soggy band-aids out of the pool when Liam showed up. She's uncomfortably aware of how dorky she must look, standing there in regulation flip-flops with a telescopic net in her hands and fresh red sunburn peeling off her nose.

“You're back,” she says breezily. That's the tone she's going for, anyway. Karma isn't quite sure she pulls it off.

“I'm back,” Liam nods. He plucks the pole out of her hands and reaches past her, effortlessly snagging the last limp band-aid out of the pool. “And you're a lifeguard,” he says. “Didn't see that one coming.” He laughs. “I can't believe you managed to go a whole summer without trying to drown Shane.”

Karma snatches the pole back and hooks it on the wall behind her. She doesn't smile.

“It was fine,” she says shortly. “Shane and I are fine. We're friends, actually. And you shouldn't be so surprised, Liam. I've wanted to be a lifeguard since I was eight.”

Liam stares at her, stymied.

“Okay.” He hesitates. “Are we – are we cool?”

“Why wouldn't we be?”

Liam runs a hand through his new short haircut.

“Well . . . I left, I guess. The truth is, I wasn't thinking about you at the time. I was thinking about me. About finding my father.” A smile breaks through when he says the word, but he tamps it down again and turns serious. “And I know we weren't together anymore, so it shouldn't matter. But then I heard Amy left. I left you with Lauren and Shane for the whole summer, when you must have really needed a friend, and I felt so guilty about that. It was a really shitty thing to do. I sent you texts,” he says uselessly.

Karma flinches. She remembers those texts. Every time her phone lit up she'd thought – hoped - it might be Amy. But it never was, and three weeks into the summer she'd powered down her iphone and tossed it into the back of a drawer.

She spots a kid running on the other side of pool and sounds a sharp blast on her whistle.

“NO RUNNING! POOL RULES!”

Shouting helps. It makes her feel stronger, more capable. When she blows on that whistle, she's Karma, queen of the pool, and every kid in a three block radius wants to be her. That's a good feeling. And she clings to good feelings, these days.

She channels the power of the red swimsuit now, as she turns to Liam and fixes him with a mega-watt smile.

“Liam, I'm fine,” she says. “I had a great summer, and I'm glad you went to find your bio-dad. Really.”

Liam seems a little dazzled by the smile.

“Really?” he says.

“Really. So . . . ?” She leaves the question hanging.

“So what?”

Liam looks confused, so Karma gives him a playful slap on the arm. It's hard to be Cheerful Karma when other people won't play along.

“Your dad! You found him! Or should I say, Zita found him.”

“Yeah, she did. Well, her PI did.” Liam looks briefly ashamed, like he's just realized the cost of Zita's PI could buy Karma's whole house. But the look disappears when he starts talking about his dad, and that beatific happiness comes back. “His name was Charles Wilder and he was Jewish. I'm Jewish, can you believe it?”

“Uh . . .” Karma was raised multi-faith and it's hard to keep track of _every_ world religion, but she's 99.9% sure Judaism passes through the maternal line. Still, Liam looks so excited. Telling him that would be like kicking a puppy, so she focuses on something else instead. “Was?”

Liam's face falls. “He's dead.”

“Oh.” Karma feels like the wind was just knocked out of her. Like half of her was somewhere else during this conversation, wrapped up in herself like she always is, and now she feels so selfish. “Oh, Liam,” she says softly. “I'm so sorry.”

“Me too.”

He doesn't say it's okay, because it's obviously not okay. How could it be? It's a hole in his life, and if Karma learned anything this summer, it's how a hole like that feels. How you can never forget about that missing piece of you, not really. Not even when you think your mind is on something else. There's a moment of awkward silence, then Liam smiles again.

“But Karma,” he gushes. “I have this whole extended family! Aunts and uncles and cousins and everything! It's amazing. I feel like I finally belong somewhere.”

Karma lays a hand on his arm.

“I'm happy for you. Really,” she says, and she hopes her sincerity shines through.

It must do, because Liam sweeps her into a brief embrace.

“Thank you,” he says.

He feels the way he always did – lean and warm and strong - but it doesn't make Karma's heart flip the way it used to. It feels warm and comfortable. A little bit sad, but it's the kind of sadness she can take. When they pull apart, it's easy to let him go.

After that, her smile feels more natural. They make small talk about school and Zita and her parents, and then Liam goes to catch up with Shane and Karma goes to patrol the deep end of the pool. And it's done. It's one reunion over with, and she survived.

* * *

 

She's still at the pool by ten pm, long after the last stragglers have gone home.

She's stacking the kiddie flotation devices. They're shaped like zoo animals, and looking at them brings back a flood of memories. She and Amy used to fight the other kids for the one shaped like a giraffe, because its long neck meant it was big enough to support them both and they couldn't stand to be separated, even then. That foam neck is creased and battered now, but Karma knows – just _knows_ – the giraffe in her hands is the same one. She puts it down in a hurry when she hears footsteps behind her. The last thing she needs is for Shane to see her lose it over a kindergarten toy.

“Brr! It's cold out here,” he whines. “Why aren't you home already?”

“I'm almost done,” Karma assures him.

“You better be. Here.”

He tosses her a jean jacket – tailored for Shane, as usual, but a depressingly perfect fit over Karma's curves. It's only when she shrugs it on that Karma realizes he was right. It is getting cold.

“Thanks,” she says, and when Shane only makes a _pfft_ sound and a dismissive hand gesture in response, she actually feels herself smile. It's weird, but what she told Liam was true. She and Shane are okay. They're even kind of friends now, which is a situation Karma never could have seen coming before this summer. At first they were allies in abandonment, nothing more, but then she saved Shane from a pack of rogue toddlers, and he saved her from a nip slip during senior aerobics class, and somewhere in between disasters a friendship just happened. She's glad it did. 

“So Liam's back,” Shane says nonchalantly.

“I know, and I'm fine.” Karma piles a foam elephant on top of the giraffe. “You don't have to worry about me. I'm good, Shane.”

Shane raises an eyebrow.

“So seeing your Prince Charming looking all Hollywood handsome, back from his mysterious travels in foreign climes, didn't make you swoon even a little?”

Karma rolls her eyes. Shane's descriptions are as colorful as always, but she's grown to love them.

“Not even a little.”

“Then you're a stronger woman than me,” her friend declares. “I saw some beachside candids of Duke on TMZ the other day and I had to lock my phone in my mom's dildo drawer just to keep me off Stubble.”

“Ew.” Karma laughs, then turns thoughtful. “I think I'm finally over him,” she admits. “I mean, I think it's really over. For good. And I think I'm okay with that.”

Shane doesn't say anything in response, just rubs her arm through the thick denim of her sleeve. He doesn't move his hand even when the moment should be over, and Karma turns to frown at him. He looks uncharacteristically serious as he frowns back at her.

“There's something you should know,” he says. “I didn't know if I should tell you, but I mean, it's not like it's a secret, and you're going to find out anyway -”

“Shane,” Karma interrupts. “Just tell me.”

He shuts up immediately, which Shane almost never does, and that's how Karma knows it's serious. It's how she knows, even before he gets the words out, what he's going to say.

“Amy's back.”


	2. some things are made, yeah they're made, to never separate

There's a text from Amy waiting for her when Karma gets home.

_I just got home_ , it reads. _Can we meet?_

Karma stares at it, hoping some hidden meaning will leap out through the cracked glass of her iphone screen. Amy gets to the point in texts (she always has done) but this feels different. It's the first contact Karma has had from her in nearly three months, and it feels anticlimactic somehow. She wants to meet, but she doesn't say why. She doesn't say how she's feeling.

_I just got home_ , Karma reads again. _Just_. That's something, isn't it? That “just” can't be an accident, not in a text message six words long. It means something. It means Karma was the first thing Amy thought of when she got back, and she wants Karma to know that. It means their friendship still matters to her.

It has to mean that.

(Doesn't it?)

Karma stares at the message again. It's late and she's tired. Her hair smells like chlorine and the sunburn is making her nose itch. She can't think.

_Okay_ , she types back. _We can have coffee tomorrow_. The words feel stilted and weird, naked without their usual accompaniment of happy emojis. She hits send before she can change her mind, then fires off another text giving Amy a place and time to meet. Then she slides the off switch and throws the phone back in the drawer.

In the shower she finds herself turning the water up, higher and hotter. There are angry tears pricking at her eyes, and she doesn't know if she's angry at Amy – for coming back like she always planned and ruining Karma's fragile summertime peace – or angry at herself, for being so confused. Because it's been so long, and half of her aches to see Amy again, but the other half is so terrified she'd run away with her own lesbian punk band if she could.

Karma scrubs the tears out of her eyes and crawls into bed with her hair still wet. When her mom knocks on her bedroom door with her nightly infusion of camomile and valerian root tea, Karma squeezes her eyes shut and pretends to be asleep already.

Maybe it's karmic justice that she sleeps poorly after that. She's too hot and then too cold. She tosses and turns, sticks one foot out of the covers, then balls them up and pushes them onto the floor.

At five am she gives up even trying to sleep, and pulls her phone out of the drawer again. Amy is still her screensaver. They were best friends when the picture was taken, long before boys and step sisters and fake lesbianing. Amy is wearing her donut tee.

_What if Amy doesn't like donuts anymore?_ Karma thinks wildly. For a second she feels all alight with panic. Then she realizes how utterly crazy she's being. Amy might not like her anymore, but there is nothing in the universe that could make her dislike _donuts_.

Karma moans. She really, really needs to sleep.

* * *

 

An hour later she's sitting bolt upright in bed, her phone pressed to her ear.

“She wants to see me!” she blurts out, as soon as the ringing stops. “What do I do?”

“Karma?” Shane's voice is thick with sleep. “Oh my god. Is that you? What time is it?”

“Six. Ish.”

“Did your house burn down?”

“What?” Karma blinks, confused, before she realizes Shane is being sarcastic. “No! It's Amy. She wants to see me and I don't know what to do. What if this is the beginning of the end, Shane? What if our friendship isn't fixable? What if she's changed, and she doesn't want me in her life anymore? What if -”

“Ugghhhhh.” Shane's sigh sounds muffled, like his head is part-way under his pillow. “Karma. You two will work it out. You always do. Now can I please go back to sleep?”

“No!” That panic is back. Karma hugs her pillow for comfort, squashing it against her stomach in the hope it will crush her sudden nausea. She can't do this alone – can't take another minute alone with her thoughts. “You weren't there when she left, Shane. I couldn't get through to her. What if she left hating me and her new lesbian friends convinced her we could never work? What if she's coming back to tell me I'm an evil straight girl who took advantage of her? What if she's right?” Karma swallows. “She _is_ right. I never should have kissed her at that stupid party. I never should have got so drunk. I never should have -”

“Been so selfish, I know. I _know_ ,” Shane interrupts. Karma realizes she might have chased these thoughts around once too often, and burns red with embarrassment. On the other end of the line, Shane sighs. “Okay, I'm awake,” he mutters. “First of all – they're lesbians, not those witches from The Craft. Amy didn't spend the whole summer burning effigies of you. Second – stop beating yourself up. I don't pretend to understand even half of what goes on with you and Amy, but you made a mistake. You're sorry. Stop hating yourself already.” He yawns. “Third – this is Amy we're talking about. I'm pretty sure she'll be crazy about you even if she doesn't want to jump your bones anymore.”

Karma chews on her thumbnail, letting his words sink in.

“You have to come with me,” she says at last. “Please?”

“Karma . . .”

“I'm meeting her at that coffee place you like. That cute barista will there. You know you like him . . .”

She drags the last word out, sing-song.

Shane groans.

“Dammit, you know my weakness.”

“So you'll come?”

“I'll come. But you're buying me coffee. And I'm not sticking around to watch you two get gushy, which I know you will. Because _like I told you_ , you'll work it out.”

Karma smiles faintly.

“Thanks.”

There is an awkward pause.

“You don't need me,” Shane says. “You got this.”

Karma stays silent. Agreeing with him would feel like a lie, and anyway there's a lump in her throat she doesn't trust herself to speak through.

“I'll see you later,” Shane tells her at last.

“Yeah,” Karma murmurs. “Later.”

The line clicks off.


	3. are we in the clear yet, are we in the clear yet? good

“Is he looking at me?”

Karma blinks.

“Who?” she says vaguely.

“Noah!”

Shane angles the sugar dispenser away from him, peering into its reflective surface.

“Who?” Karma says again.

She's finding it hard to focus. Meeting here is starting to seem like a bad idea. The Brew And Chew, Shane's favorite coffee place, is open plan – there isn't even an entrance way she can keep her eyes fixed on. Amy could appear from anywhere.

“ _Noah!_ ” Shane says impatiently. “Cute barista guy! It's on his shirt.”

“Oh.”

Karma can't give Shane her full attention. Her gaze has snagged on a blonde girl two tables away. She's too short to be Amy, and her hair is up in a ponytail. Amy hardly ever wears it like that. And she's wearing a pink Hollister sweatshirt, which Amy wouldn't be seen dead in. But Karma can't take her eyes off that blonde head.

Then the blonde turns, and of course, her face is all wrong. She's not Amy, just like none of the blonde girls Karma stared at all summer were Amy. The stranger giggles and links arms with a cute brunette in a tiny Playboy tee. They collect matching frappucinos and walk out arm in arm, and Karma's heart aches with jealousy.

She wants that. _She wants her best friend back_.

“Earth to Karma! Hello!”

Shane snaps his fingers in front of her face, and Karma comes back to herself with a jolt.

“Sorry, Shane. I spaced out.”

“Well, could you space out in the direction of my crush? I need to know if he's looking at me.”

“Uh . . .” Karma peers over at Noah. “He's steaming milk.”

“You're hopeless,” Shane gripes. He rests his chin on the heel of his hands, looking dejected. “I just spent ten minutes suggestively picking out pie, and _nothing_! It was like he didn't even know I was hitting on him.”

He stabs moodily at a slice of lemon meringue, and Karma feels a smile tug at the corners of her mouth.

“Maybe he's straight?” she suggests.

Shane looks offended.

“No way. I have impeccable gaydar,” he declares. “And Noah pings. He _definitely_ pings.”

Karma raises her eyebrows.

“You could be wrong. You thought Wade was gay,” she points out.

“He was bisexual! And he was totally into me! I admit,” Shane says generously, “I was narrow-minded in thinking that meant he couldn't _also_ be into you. You have a lot of qualities I couldn't appreciate back then. Like your excellent hair.” He tugs playfully on one of her curls. “But I still consider Wade a victory for my gaydar. I mean, he wasn't _straight._ ”

“Fine. What about me and Amy?” Karma counters. “You were so sure _we_ were a couple you outed us to the whole school, remember? And we weren't!”

Shane rolls his eyes.

“You were a blip on my radar,” he scoffs. “My track record is perfect except for that one _teensy_ incident! And in my defence, Amy is super gay. Don't even deny it.” He sips his coffee and smirks. “The point is: Noah is gay. I just need to find a flirting technique that gets through to him.”

“You could dress up as Danny Zuko and crush a lollipop at his feet.”

“I do look good in skin-tight leather.”

“Shane, _no_.”

“Fine! Spoilsport.”

Shane sticks his tongue out at her, and Karma smothers a smile. Not for the first time, she's glad of her friendship with Shane. He's what Amy's mom would call “loud” (as in, “my gosh, that boy is _loud!_ ”) but it's not a bad thing. Shane is just . . . unstoppable. That's what Karma would call it. He goes after what he wants and he doesn't let anyone stand in his way. It's a feeling Karma wishes she could channel sometimes. Total self-confidence.

She wonders what that would feel like.

“He looks soulful,” Shane is musing beside her. “Don't you think he looks soulful?” He sighs dreamily. “Look at his eyes. They're so dark and mysterious. I bet he writes poetry.” He gasps. “That's it! I'll find out who his favorite poet is, and then I'll start drinking black coffee here every day with my copy of Walt Whitman or whoever, and he'll think I'm _super_ deep and -”

“Won't realize you don't give a crap about poetry,” a familiar voice interjects.

The hairs on the back of Karma's neck stand up and suddenly she can't breathe.

“Amy!” Shane cries. He springs up without hesitating and runs around the table til he's behind Karma, where Amy is standing. Then he crushes her in a hug.

“Hey, Shane,” Amy grins. She hugs back, still wearing her Shane-smile, but over his shoulder her eyes are fixed on Karma.

Her expression is hard to read. Nervous? Sad, maybe? Mostly she just looks like she's drinking Karma in.

She cut her hair. It brushes her shoulders now and it looks fuller, lighter than before. And she's sporting a deep golden tan. No make-up, or no make-up you'd notice, anyway. She's wearing linen pants and a loose-cut, deep red top with cut-outs at the side. If Amy put any thought into this outfit, it doesn't show. She looks no-effort, celebrity-getting-off-a-flight good.

Karma tugs at the hem of her skirt, suddenly feeling overdressed by comparison. She spent an hour deciding what to wear this morning, wondering how much effort was _too_ much effort. She couldn't decide if trying to look pretty would encourage Amy to preserve their friendship, or just remind her of the reasons it foundered in the first place. In the end she'd settled on a white lace sundress and cork wedges – simple, not sexy – but then she'd spent another hour curling her hair and blending her eyeshadow according to some YouTube tutorial. Because she's a mess lately, and she doesn't trust any of her own decisions.

Her friendship necklace is hanging round her neck.

She wore it all summer, and it looks pretty gross. The chlorine at the pool ate away at the fake gold so much the little heart has turned a shiny pinkish-brown. Karma had to swap out the chain for a new one too. A month after Amy left it snapped, and the whole necklace was almost swallowed up by Shane's garbage disposal. But she was able to save the charm, and she kept wearing it. Eventually she even stopped taking it off to sleep.

She toys with it now, the jagged edge digging into the flesh of her palm as she watches Shane hug Amy.

Eventually Amy pulls away.

“I missed you too,” she says fondly.

“Clearly you didn't miss me enough,” Shane pouts. “You stayed gone all summer!” He taps her on the nose. “Next time you need to find yourself, you're doing it in Austin. I don't care, I'm making it a rule.”

Amy raises an eyebrow.

“A rule, huh? You missed me that much?”

Shane grins.

“You're my only gay friend,” he says. “Of _course_ I missed you.”

His tone is light, and Karma knows she's supposed to read that as a joke. But it hits an old nerve. It reminds her how much of an outsider she used to feel around Shane and Amy. They have a bond – the gay thing - that excludes her.

Maybe now Amy is back, it'll exclude her again.

Karma pushes this thought aside.

 _You're being insecure_ , she tells herself.

But she can't stop her traitorous mouth.

“We both missed you,” it blurts out.

She cringes and tries to cover it up with a smile. Shane stares at her with an _oh my god be cool_ expression, but Amy seems to soften.

“I missed you too,” she says gently. “C'mere.”

She holds open her arms.

For the tiniest moment Karma hesitates. She's almost afraid to step into Amy's arms. It doesn't last long – the space of a heartbeat, no longer – but it confuses her. She spent all summer picturing this moment, but now it's here and all she can think is that the last time she was this close to Amy, she kissed her.

That kiss almost destroyed their friendship. Maybe that's what this is, this fear. Maybe she's afraid she'll ruin them for good if she gets too close.

She holds herself stiffly when she steps into the embrace, but then Amy whispers “ _it's okay”_ and Karma just _melts_. She tucks her chin onto Amy's shoulder and buries her face in her hair, breathing her in. It's like oxygen, like that first cool blast of the A/C in a baking hot car.

 _I missed you so much,_ she thinks, only this time she manages to clamp down on her mouth and keep the thought safe in her head.

Amy breaks the embrace first. She takes a little shuddery breath as she does so, and when she pulls away there are tears in her eyes.

Karma's stomach drops instantly. She fucked up again, she thinks – she held on too long or too tight, hurt Amy somehow and blew apart their only chance at friendship. She opens her mouth to apologize, but the look on her face must say it all, because Amy cuts her off with a quick shake of the head.

“No, Karma, it's not . . . it's not you.” She blinks away the tears and takes a deeper breath. “It's me. I worked so hard to get over you this summer, but I was . . . shit. I was scared.”

“Scared?” Karma echoes.

Amy stands up a little straighter, and looks her in the eye. When she speaks next, her voice is steady.

“I was scared it wouldn't work. I was scared I'd hug you and _bang_ _”_ \- she points at her chest and imitates a gunshot - “right back in love with you! But I don't . . . it doesn't . . .” She rolls her eyes, apparently frustrated by her own incoherence. “I'm trying to say it wasn't like that. _It worked,_ Karma. I'm okay. We're gonna be okay.”

It's supposed to be good news. It _is_ good news, so Karma can't figure out why her stomach feels like it kept on falling and is now crashing through the floor.

“That's great,” she says, hoping Amy can't hear the hollow note in her voice. "Wow. So great."

“It is.” Amy smiles shyly – proudly – at her. “We can do it. We can make it now, I know we can.”

“I'm so happy,” Karma says. It's not exactly the truth, but it's not a lie either. She _will_ be happy, when she adjusts to the idea of a world where Amy doesn't love her that way anymore. She just needs time to get her head around it.

“Not as happy as I am!” Shane interrupts. “I hate it when you two fight.” He throws an arm around each of them and beams. “Can I take this as confirmation your BFF-dom is reinstated? Or do you need to hug it out some more?”

“We're good,” Amy assures him.

“The best,” Karma agrees. “You can go flirt with Noah now if you want.”

Shane waves a hand dismissively.

“He went on a break. And I still haven't decided on a strategy for seduction.” He sighs. “But I know when I'm being a third wheel. Later, gators!”

He air-kisses Karma, and sniggers when Amy ducks his attempt to do the same to her.

When he leaves, Amy sinks into his empty seat. She pinches off a piece of Karma's untouched blueberry muffin and pops it in her mouth, a smile spreading across her face as she chews.

“This is so good,” she says indistinctly. “Mmm, my god.”

She licks the crumbs off her upper lip, and Karma finds herself staring. She'd forgotten Amy used to do that.

“You can have it,” she blurts out.

She slides the muffin over to Amy, and is pathetically pleased when Amy smiles again. Part of her knows she's trying too hard, but Karma can't stop herself. When Amy smiles she feels like her world is settling back into place again – like they really will be okay. And she needs to believe that, more than anything.

“So.” She props her chin on her upturned hands. “Tell me about your summer. I wanna know _everything_.”

“It was amazing,” Amy says rapturously. “Being on the road, and being around other queer girls . . . it opened my eyes so much. There's a whole world outside Austin, Karma. I mean, it's not like I didn't know that before I left – but knowing it and really _seeing_ it is . . . it's different. And I took so many pictures! They're at home, but I have to show you later. There's this one sunset where I caught the light just right and it looks like _fire_ . . .”

Amy loves dorking out over photography stuff and Karma is happy to listen. After a summer apart, she could listen to Amy read take-out menus and not get bored. Most of the stuff about filters and lenses and aspect ratio flies right over her head, but the zine Amy's band pictures were featured in sounds cool, and her tales of climbing bars and amps to get the perfect shot (and subsequently falling off those bars and amps) crack Karma up. She just _has_ to counter that with the story of her nip slip in senior aerobics class, which makes Amy laugh so hard she looks like she's going into anaphylactic shock, and it's . . . perfect. Sitting here with Amy, wiping away tears of laughter, their hands clasped over the table . . . it's everything.

An hour passes without them noticing, until Amy's phone buzzes. She reads the text and grimaces.

“Sorry,” she says. “I have to go. We're having a family dinner. It's this new thing my mom is trying to prove we're a stable family unit.” She makes air quotes around the last three words and rolls her eyes.

“Oh.” Karma feels herself deflate. It's too soon for Amy to leave. “You and your mom?”

Amy looks briefly uncomfortable.

“Yeah,” she says carefully. “Me and my mom. And . . . Lauren.”

Well that's weird.

“Wait - Lauren still lives with you? I thought your mom and Bruce were getting a divorce? I thought he moved out?”

“He did. Lauren . . . Lauren stayed.”

Amy looks even more uncomfortable now.

“Wow,” Karma says sympathetically. “That sucks. Your mom ditched Bruce and you're still stuck with the evil stepsister. Poor you.”

Amy flinches.

“She's not evil.”

“What?”

Amy squares her shoulders, the way she does when she's steeling herself to tell the truth. She takes a deep breath.

“Look, Karma . . . Lauren isn't . . . I mean, she's not so bad. Don't get me wrong, she's still a bitch, and she drives me crazy sometimes, but she's . . . family. She's my sister.”

“ _What?_ ”

Amy reddens.

“I said, she's my sister, okay? I asked her to stay when Bruce left, and she did – she stayed for _me_ , even though she hates Hester and she has no real friends here. She stayed, and she put up with my mom and my phone calls all summer and - and a lot more she didn't have to. For me. Because I asked her to. So can we cool it with the Lauren jokes? Please? They're not funny anymore.”

Karma feels like she's been slapped in the face.

Amy talked to one person all summer, and it wasn't Karma. It wasn't even Shane.

It was _Lauren_.

“Sorry,” she mumbles, still feeling shell-shocked.

“Thanks,” Amy says. She squeezes Karma's hand across the table. “I'll text you,” she promises. “We can meet up tomorrow, just the two of us. I'll show you my pictures. Hey, and my surprise!”

“Surprise?”

Karma isn't sure she can take any more surprises.

“You'll see! C'mon, if I told you, you know it wouldn't be a surprise.”

Amy winks. Then she hugs Karma – a hug that is way too brief for Karma's liking – and leaves, waving and making texting motions with her hand.

Karma waves back, one-handed. The other hand is toying with her friendship necklace.

When she lets go, there's a groove in the shape of a halved heart embedded in her thumb.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes on some of the changes I made here:
> 
> \- This is a season three rewrite, so I'll be altering things or repurposing them in a more realistic way as we go on. One of the changes is that Noah now has Liam's job at the coffee shop. My reasoning went like this: Noah is a trans kid who has was kicked out by his parents and has been living in an LGBT homeless shelter. He's quite far along in his transition, so he's obviously had to be self-sufficient for a while. It didn't make much sense to me that Noah would think he could make a living from busking and open mic events, while Liam (who has lived in incredible wealth his entire life) would do the sensible thing and get an unglamorous job in the service industry to survive. The characterization seemed all backwards to me. I mean, if anyone was going to be naive enough to think they could support themselves with their art alone, it'd be Liam - while Noah's history would make him the character least likely to be driven by idealism. So Noah works at the coffee shop, in this fic, and Liam will head in a different direction.
> 
> \- An even bigger change I made is to cut Karmygeddon entirely. We got some scenes I loved out of it in canon (Hump Day, the men's room bar mitzvah scene, the compost detention with that slowed-down version of Girls Just Wanna Have Fun playing as Karmy go their separate ways) but in the end, the fighting didn't actually add anything to their arc. So while Karma and Amy will have their differences in this fic, they won't happen immediately, and they won't happen for the same reasons. The twin sticking points for their friendship are going to be a) Karma's underlying feelings for Amy, and b) the ways Amy has changed over the summer. 
> 
> \- Because Amy has changed. This is another aspect where I feel the show really dropped the ball. Amy went away for the summer (with this awesome lesbian punk band) to get over Karma - but in the show Karma seems to be the one who changed most. And that didn't ring entirely true to me. I feel like Amy, in going out and seeing more of the world, would come back with a different outlook, and not fall so easily back into old habits. Whereas I think Karma, who is hugely insecure and never wanted Amy to leave, would spend most of the summer in a state of stasis, waiting for her best friend to return so life could go back to normal. So that's where they're at.
> 
> Comment or kudos if you liked it! :)


	4. you're slowly letting me go, and i know this feeling, oh so

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amy delivers some hard truths, and the Karmy friendship hits a crisis point.

Karma sleeps well that night for the first time since Amy left.

Sure, their reunion wasn't everything Karma had hoped for – Amy didn't immediately dive into her arms and promise never to leave again as long as they both live – but that's not important. What matters is that Amy is back. Amy is here. Everything else is fixable.

Karma sleeps so soundly she misses her alarm. Her rude awakening comes in the form of Zen dripping cold water down the back of her neck.

“Zen, you asshole!” she shrieks. She throws a pillow at his head and is annoyed when he dodges it.

“Rise and shine, lonely heart,” he smirks. “Your girlfriend's here.”

“Amy's here? Oh my god, I overslept!” Karma springs out of bed and grasps for her clothes. “And she's not my girlfriend. Stop calling her that.” She stops and shoots him a glare. “Did you say that to her? If you said that to her I swear -”

“Oh, like you have anything on me,” Zen snorts.

This is true. Zen moved back in at the end of June, when he got caught smoking pot in the stockroom of his lame job and was fired by the manager. Karma thinks he was just being stupid, but their parents interpreted his actions as a subliminal cry for help. They've spent the whole summer "rebuilding his self-esteem" and  "exploring his path", while Zen gets baked and pretends to be emotionally vulnerable.

Karma abandons a losing argument, and turns her attention to Amy instead.

“Where is she? Is she outside? Did she come in?”

“She's downstairs,” Zen says languidly. “Mom and Dad are giving her the Blessing Of The Returning Traveler.”

Karma winces. Her parents can be so embarrassing sometimes. Still, at least Amy knows them well enough to play along with the hippy weirdness.

“Get out,” she orders Zen, shoving him out the door so she can get dressed. 

Day-old curls are a good look on her. Karma braids the front section of her hair and pins it into place, then dons her red swimsuit for later. She puts on a black flippy skirt over her suit, and Shane's borrowed denim jacket, then crams her feet into plain white Keds.

It's lazy, but it'll have to do.

She finishes off with eyeliner, two coats of mascara, and a slick of sheer lip gloss. Just enough to make her features pop. Add silver hoops, check the position of her friendship necklace, and she's good to go.

She bounces down the stairs two at a time and skids into the kitchen.

“Amy!”

“Hey, sleepyhead.”

Amy gives a little wave. She's sitting on the counter top, sipping a LezBerry Blast, but she jumps down when she sees Karma and pulls her in for a hug.

It's not a real hug. It's one arm around Karma's shoulders, a quick squeeze, and then release.

That shouldn't bother her as much as it does.

Amy, as usual, looks unfairly good. Her hair is swept back in a side braid, and she's wearing a knitted tank top thing and jean shorts. The space between the shorts hem and her beat-up Chuck Taylors seems to go on forever – an endless expanse of toned bronze legs Karma can't tear her eyes off.

“You got so tan,” she blurts out, when her staring becomes obvious.

Amy laughs, a little nervously.

“Yeah.”

“So, uh . . .” _Just do it_ , Karma tells herself. _Don't be a baby_. “Did you bring your surprise? Is it a smokin' hot new girlfriend? You know how I hate being kept in suspense.”

“Please – I wish I had a smokin' hot girlfriend.” Amy laughs again. “No,” she says. “It's not that. But it _is_ a new love.”

Karma panics.

“What?”

“Come see!” Amy says mysteriously.

She takes Karma's hand and leads her outside.

“Close your eyes,” she orders. “Okay . . . open!”

Karma stares.

“Oh, my god.”

“Do you like it?” Amy is standing, arms spread proudly, in the driveway. “Isn't she beautiful?” she gushes.

She's standing in front of -

“You bought the truck from Twilight,” Karma says, dumbfounded.

Amy has always been obsessed with that truck. The dusty red color, the high rounded cab, the flatbed in back. Everything about it. She's wanted it since they hate-read the first book together. 

And now here it is in Karma's driveway, and the keys are jingling in Amy's hand.

“Yup!” she says. “Okay, I admit – she's not the _actual_ truck. That would have been crazy expensive. But she's the same model and the same color, and she drives like a bear.” Amy caresses the wing mirror, smiling. “Between my mom's guilt over the divorce, and Bruce's guilt over moving out, and my _dad's_ guilt over taking that job in Syria, I had enough to buy this beauty.”

Karma swallows.

“But . . . you can't drive."

Neither of them can. It was one of the things they were supposed to do this summer – the summer of sixteen, the summer of Karma and Amy. They'd both get lifeguarding jobs, and learn to drive, and work on their portfolios for Clement. That was the plan.

 _Was_ the plan.

Amy's smile fades slightly.

“I learned over the summer,” she says. “I was living in a van with five other girls, and I had all this free time . . . It seemed like a good idea.” Her face falls. “You're angry I learned without you.”

“What? No!” Karma shakes her head so fast she thinks she might have just given herself whiplash. “No. I think it's great!” she protests.

“You do?”

“Absolutely!”

“Really? You're not even a little mad?” Amy sounds doubtful.

“No! No way.” Karma laughs. It comes out sounding high and unnatural. She tries harder, tries to tamp down how hurt she feels. She knows she's not being fair. “I became a lifeguard without you,” she says, as much for her own sake as Amy's. “How could I be mad at you? It wouldn't be fair.”

Amy smiles again, that little shy smile that makes her look like a puppy.

“I'm so glad you see it like that. So . . . ” She jingles the keys and grins over at Karma. “Can I take you for a drive?”

 

* * *

 

“Whoohooooo!”

Amy is a terrible driver and Karma doesn't even care. She bounces up and down in her seat happily as Amy manhandles the truck down the bumpy road to the lake.

Karma can't stop cheering and she's grinning like a goober, but she doesn't care. She doesn't care about anything. She's finally getting the summer she dreamed of. Who cares if it's almost over? It's here right now and it's happening, she's here with Amy and she finally feels the way she should have felt when the last bell went at school. Light, and free, and so, so happy.

She sticks her head out of the window and whoops again, feeling the air fill up her lungs, letting the wind whip through her hair.

“Whooo! It's summer! Summ-errrrr!”

“It's been summer for months,” Amy argues, but Karma can hear the smile in her voice, so she turns back and shoots her friend a grin.

“I'm living in the now,” she says sweetly.

“Finding your center,” Amy scoffs.

“Surrendering my chi.”

“You made that one up.” Amy hesitates. “Right?”

Karma sticks out her tongue.

“Maybe. Or maybe that's really something my parents say now.” She raises her eyebrows. “I mean, _The Blessing Of The Returning Traveler_?”

Amy winces.

“I thought it was nice,” she says unconvincingly.

“Please. You wanted the ground to swallow you up and we both know it,” Karma teases. “Plus, you still have sage in your hair.”

She reaches out to pluck the herb out of Amy's blonde hair but Amy jumps, her elbow colliding with the steering wheel, and they almost clunk down a gear without meaning to.

Karma pulls her hand back.

“Sorry.”

“It's okay,” Amy mumbles. “Just . . . a little warning next time?”

“Sure.”

An awkward silence falls.

“Is it . . .” Karma hesitates. “Is it . . . still hard for you?”

Amy exhales. They bounce over another pothole.

“No,” she says at last. “I mean, not like it was. It doesn't make me wish you would” - she grimaces - “fall in love with me, or kiss me, or anything. Not like it used to.”

“Then . . . I don't get it,” Karma says carefully.

Amy pulls the truck over. She shuts off the engine and just sits there for a long minute, staring out through the windscreen, her hands still resting at ten and two.

“I'm not in love with you anymore,” she says at last. “But it took me a long time to get to that point. And one of the things I realized was that I need boundaries. Between us.” She stares down at her lap. “Maybe I knew that before I ever went away, but I didn't want to admit it. I wanted everything to stay the same.”

“What's wrong with that?”

The leather seat is sticking to the underside of her knees. Suddenly Karma feels hot and uncomfortable, trapped in the cab with the A/ C turned off.

Amy inhales sharply.

“What's wrong is that I like girls, and you don't, and I don't think you realize how some of this stuff makes me feel. All the hair-fixing and face-touching and slow-dancing, it doesn't . . . it doesn't feel the way you think it does. You think it means we're best friends and we're super close and that's it.” She lets out her breath in a frustrated huff. “You think it's okay because we're both girls so it doesn't count. You don't think it's flirting or leading me on, or . . . or giving me hope.”

Karma feels two feet tall.

“I never meant to -” she starts, but Amy won't let her finish.

“I know you don't _mean_ to do it,” she interrupts. “But you don't even think about it and sometimes that's worse." She levels Karma with a look. “If I slow-danced with Liam you'd never let me hear the end of it.”

“That's diff -”

“It's different to you. It's not different to me.” Amy swallows. “It's not innocent when you touch me like that,” she says softly. “It's what my girlfriend would do, and you can't be that. So I can't . . . I can't let you do that.”

There's a burning lump in Karma's throat, and she can barely fit her words around it.

“I'm sorry,” she says.

Amy stares up at the roof, blinking rapidly.

“I know.” She takes a deep breath, and meets Karma's eye again. “Karma, you'll always be my best friend. I'll always love you. But you can't be my soulmate. We can't talk about spending our lives together, and growing old side by side. Because that's not what friends do. That's what the sad old couple does in The Notebook. I think I started to realize that last year, when you were dating Liam.” Her throat bobs. Her voice is strained now, and Karma knows she must be close to crying too. “I wasn't enough for you, and I hated that. But I understand it now. You wanted someone you could share everything with. Someone you could build a future with someday. _One_ future, not two futures side-by-side.”

“You're my future,” Karma whispers.

Amy shakes her head.

“Maybe when we were in kindergarten. It was a nice dream, but it wasn't real. Someday you'll meet your real Prince Charming and he won't want me third-wheeling in your fairytale ending.” She attempts a weak grin. “And someday I'll meet someone too. Probably a girl someone. And I won't marry her, because if my mother's track record taught me anything, it's that Raudenfelds and matrimony are a match made in hell.” The ghost of a smile twitches across her lips, then she turns serious again. She twists her hands in her lap. “So when I tell that girl I love her . . . I'll tell her I want to grow old with her. I'll tell her I want a future with her. I'll tell her she's my soulmate.” She takes a shaky breath. “I can't tell her that if someone else already is.”

“But . . . we _are_ soulmates,” Karma says brokenly. Her head is spinning.

“We're best friends,” Amy corrects, quiet but firm. “We can't keep saying we're soulmates and we're everything to each other, Karma. Because you think it's being deep and dramatic, but I think it's romantic, and if we carry on down that road . . . I'll never really be over you. It'll sneak up on me again, like it did before.”

Karma shakes her head.

“I don't ever want to hurt you like that again, Amy,” she says. “But we _are_ soulmates. Friends don't have our connection. Friends couldn't survive what we have. Friends . . . friends don't . . . _we're not friends!_ We're so much _more_ than that, why can't you see -”

“I _see_ that we're best friends,” Amy interrupts. “I don't see why that's not good enough for you.”

Karma snaps off her seatbelt, rage flaring in the pit of her stomach.

“Because it's not!” she fires back. “It's so fucking ordinary, and what we have is special! Why can't you see that? Why am I the only one fighting for us, _again_?”

“I _am_ fighting for us!”

“You're throwing us away!”

Karma jumps out of the vehicle and slams the door behind her. Outside, the air is thick and humid. Rainclouds have rolled in out of nowhere and the sky looks heavy and gray, like it's hanging fifty feet above her head.

Her ankles sink into sand as she storms up the road. They must be closer to the lake than she thought.

“Karma, come back.”

Amy is following her.

“No.”

“Karma, this is crazy,” Amy begs. “You can't walk all the way home.”

“I'll hitch.”

“Yeah, because that's not a sure-fire way to get yourself murdered.”

“What do you care?” Karma snaps.

Amy grabs onto her wrist. She opens her mouth to say something, but -

_Crack._

There is a flash of pink lightning and both girls scream. Then the heavens open and unleash a deluge of warm rain.

They scream again at the shock of being instantly soaked, and then Amy is running back to the truck, tugging Karma along by the wrist, and Karma is running too. Amy's hand slips in the rain and Karma almost loses her – she grasps for her fingers and locks them tight in her own, and they scramble back into the cab, still hand in hand.

The rain thuds dully against the windscreen, but the sound is muted through the glass. All Karma can hear is their own ragged breathing, which suddenly seems like the loudest sound on Earth.

She stares at their clasped hands, then realizes Amy is staring at them too and slowly lets go.

They sit in silence, listening to the windscreen wipers swish back and forth.

“I'm scared I'm going to lose you,” Karma says at last. “I'm so scared of that, Amy.”

Their eyes meet, and this time neither of them looks away.

“Karma -”

“No, please. Let me finish.” Karma breathes deep. “You mean the world to me. I don't know what I would do without you. I barely kept it together this summer. But now you're back and you're changing, and – and you can't even see it but you're pulling away. And I don't know how to pull you back.”

“You can't.”

“Wh – what?”

Amy runs a hand through her hair, squeezing water out of the ends. She sighs.

“Karma, I can't be how I was before with you. That Amy was in love with you, probably from that day we first met in the ball pit. You never had to pull me back before because all I ever wanted was to be close to you. But that wasn't healthy.” She glances over, at the bitten edges of Karma's nails. “Maybe not for either of us.”

Karma says nothing. She hates herself for thinking it, but there's a part of her that wondered this summer if their friendship was healthy too. If it was normal to feel like the way she did without Amy, like she was drowning on dry land.

“Maybe our friendship can't ever look the same,” Amy says softly. “But maybe that's not a bad thing. We didn't even have other friends before we faked being lesbians, remember? Our only friend was Irma the lunch lady. We were too intense. And I had this part of me that likes girls, and looking back on it, I'm not surprised those lines got blurred for me. But now I know how it happened I have to be the one to stop it happening again.” She flashes Karma a small smile. “In case you haven't noticed, you're ridiculously easy to fall in love with.”

“No, I'm not.”

“Are you kidding? You're funny and creative, and you're a total knock-out.” Amy nudges her playfully in the ribs. “But that's why I have to be on my guard. Put up boundaries. And I know it sucks, but the only other way I know to stay over you is to cut you out of my life completely, and I really, really don't want to do that.” She hesitates. “I don't want to lose you either, Karma. So can we please try and make this work?”

She holds out her hand.

Karma doesn't trust herself to speak. She nods instead, and then puts her hand in Amy's and lets Amy's fingers enfold hers.

They sit like that until the rain stops.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, this took a surprisingly emotional turn in the writing. Karma touched Amy's hair, and it spiraled. But I think that's true to life in many ways - one small action can spark off an emotional landslide. And Amy has a lot to get off her chest regarding Karma and this friendship. 
> 
> I know a lot of people love the Karmy friendship, so I'm nervous about how Amy purposefully downgrading it will be received. But to me, Amy instituting boundaries (and actually sticking to them) is really important. 
> 
> I also operate on the theory that Karma doesn't realize she wants more than friendship with Amy. Removing the romantic subtext from their relationship will force her to look at why she wants that intimacy. It might look like I'm weakening Karmy, but have faith. I'm doing it to make them stronger in the long run. 
> 
> Side note: That summer storm is the most Nicholas Sparks thing I've ever written. It was great. 
> 
> As always, comment or kudos if you liked it! :)


End file.
